Black Friday is a time for people to tent out in front of stores, like Best Buy, for eight hours in hopes of getting 30 percent off items like iPads. It is a marketing invention used to delude people into thinking they are getting the best deals on the hottest items. People become animalistic over, what in reality, are very minimal savings, and sometimes, the results lead to people actually dying. It is one day out of the year that people start shopping at midnight on Friday and do not stop until 5 p.m. on Friday. Why do people get so ridiculous over these deals? The world may never know, but there is one thing we can know for sure: people are crazy.
Black Friday has its dark side, but it does have a good side as well. It gives us an insight on how people are spending their money in tough economic times. It also creates seasonal jobs, which allow people to make a little extra money to spend. This year’s Black Friday spending increased by 31 percent as opposed to last year’s spending, according to msnbc.msn.com, but that is just in-store shopping. The money really comes in from online shoppers. The number of shoppers this year compared to last year increased by 63 percent, according to moneyland.time.com. In essence, Black Friday looks good on paper, and it does stimulate the economy a tiny bit, but sometimes the deals might not be worth the risk.
Violence, unfortunately, goes hand-in-hand with Black Friday. People seem to have no sense of morality once they get into that Wal-Mart at 10 at night. This is great for social behavior psychologists but not so much for the average shopper. This year’s Black Friday produced some pretty violent scenarios, which show how inhumane people can act. The first incident comes from California. A woman tried to get a gaming console at a discounted price, but she ran into some complications when she saw that other people had their eyes on the console as well. So how did she solve the problem? The lady proceeded to take pepper spray out of her purse and douse the crowd in a cloud of the blinding toxin. She even hit innocent children. The worst part is no one bothered to stop the woman; they just kept shopping.
The next incident, also in California, happened to a man and his family. The man was walking out to his car with his family when they were robbed at gunpoint for the items they had just purchased. The victims fought with the thieves, which just angered them. The result? The man was shot.
Of course, it would not be Black Friday if it did not include good old-fashioned brawls. Florida, New York, Alabama and Connecticut all had reports of people duking it out for the slashed prices. The fighting in New York was so bad that two people were actually taken to the local hospital to receive treatment for minor injuries that they sustained.
Put yourself in these types of situations. What would you do? Would you turn a blind eye to a lady dousing adults and children alike with pepper spray? Could you ever find yourself actually being the person using the pepper spray? Would you ever fight someone because they took the last Xbox? These are all things that seem unfathomable to fight over, but it is the nature of Black Friday. The deals are not even that good if you think about it. Nike can make shoes for pennies then proceed to sell them for $80 and on Black Friday sell them for $50. That is not much of a deal to be hurting your fellow man over.
The holidays are a stressful time for everyone, and people go way too crazy for these so-called deals. Violence like this is unnecessary and unwarranted. If businesses want to have these kinds of sales then they need to provide better security so people stay safe. However, until that day comes, people need to learn how to be civil and act like mature human beings.
